I've seen this for things like Rick and Morty, Sonic, Dragon Ball, etc. "They've ruined (insert franchise here) because the fandom is so cringy", they would say. Why is this when you can simply enjoy the show/games you like without interacting with those people, makes no sense.

Yeah, if you're interested in something then its fans shouldn't affect your enjoyment of it. I think you'll mostly hear this from people who don't want to get into a franchise and use this as an excuse to why.

I try not to let them ruin my enjoyment, but a part of fandom is enjoying discussing it with other fans, but sadly there are lots of people that do little but complain about things. Their criticisms aren't even constructive.

The biggest truths aren't original. The truth is ketchup. It's Jim Belushi. Its job isn't to blow our minds. It's to be within reach.
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take - Wayne Gretzky" - Michael Scott
Happiness is climate, not weather.

If a fandom for something is crappy, I just find fans of it within other fandoms that are nice, and discuss it with them. Alternatively, I just enjoy it on my own. Speaking as a fan of Rick And Morty, Homestuck, and someone who used to watch Steven Universe, bad fandoms are really a non-issue; just enjoy the thing, and talk to your friends about it if you must. If you can see Star Wars, Game Of Thrones, or anything else big and current, and you can hold back on spoilers, then you can watch a show without dealing with the fandom at large.
And when something is as big and everywhere as Dragon Ball, Rick And Morty, and many of these other things with bad fandoms, you'll find fans of them everywhere, so it's not like you won't have anyone to discuss it with.

Akira Toriyama wrote:Like many things people endlessly insist that I said, I never said this.

And really, its the cringy and crazy fans that tend to earn my ire, not the series itself. I enjoy the Dragon Ball franchise as a whole, but I also recognize that we have some pretty awful fans that pop up here and there that tend to give the rest of us a bad name, because they go everywhere else and tell people how much their franchise sucks or something.

And I wish I was exaggerating. You have the DBZ/Naruto fandom wars, the DBZ/DC Comics wars, and the DBZ/Marvel wars just to name the three biggest. And often ugliest.

Of course it's silly. As others have said, no one should let others' opinions on something influence how you enjoy that thing. If you enjoy it, enjoy it.

That being said, though, it's still difficult for me to actively participate in discussions related to DBS because there's just too much negativity in general (particularly on Kanzenshuu, but not exclusively). I want to discuss things I enjoy in a positive way - certainly with criticisms, but not with overwhelming negativity.

No personal issues with anyone, it's just a gripe I've had with the community for quite a while now.

Enjoy things for yourself, always. That said, I know quite a bit about Game of Thrones without having any interest in it at all just so I know what my friends are talking about. I wonder what that would be filed under?

Jackalope89 wrote:the DBZ/DC Comics wars, and the DBZ/Marvel wars just to name the three biggest. And often ugliest.

I struggle to understand why these two "fandom wars" in particular even exist.

This is the episode of when Gokuh enrages himself after Freezer talk shit about Kuririn

There are a few things I'm into where I'm either very selective about what parts of the community I interact with or I just don't get involved in their fan communities at all. Part of this is due to how the community is known to act. The other is because I've been so heavily invested in Dragon Ball fandom for something close to 20 years that I really don't really want to go anywhere else.

Good examples might include Avatar: The last Airbender (and Korra), Rick & Morty, and Steven Universe. All fun shows, but a combination of fandom reputation and a lack of free time keep me from really embracing their fandoms anymore than me seeing a DB fan Tweet about something like ATLA and me responding with something relevant to that Tweet.

All that said, the DB fan community has a bit of a bad rep at times, too.

If said fandom is comprised of hypocrites & insecure assholes aggrandazing a garbageshow pretentious of it being the ultimate masterpiece & accomplish nothin but abuse/troll fans of other shows while the fanbase itself relishes living in paradise of fool.

You got every reason to hate goddamn anime/show

If there's significanly lack of fandom surrounding a exceptionally great show & scores on every aspect: characters, storyboard, production values, themes & its dedicated fanbase actually respect fans of different shows.

If said fandom is comprised of hypocrites & insecure assholes aggrandazing a garbageshow pretentious of it being the ultimate masterpiece & accomplish nothin but abuse/troll fans of other shows while the fanbase itself relishes living in paradise of fool.

You got every reason to hate goddamn anime/show

If there's significanly lack of fandom surrounding a exceptionally great show & scores on every aspect: characters, storyboard, production values, themes & its dedicated fanbase actually respect fans of different shows.

Now such shows dont deserve hate, instead mountains of love[/spoiler]

But... why? If you enjoy something, the fanbase shouldn't affect your enjoyment of that thing regardless of the direction said fanbase leans towards. Sure, it may affect your interaction with those fans, but it doesn't change the series itself nor should it change your opinion of it.

Solution: social media echo chambers filled with only the people you deem of sufficient intellectual capacity to properly express their love of any given art without sincerely lashing out at other aspects of said fandom!

Otherwise, yeah, I don't have time to hate something merely because of its fans. Probably. I hope. The concept of hating a work because of its fandom really does sound like a personal problem, at the end of the day.

She/Her | The only way to be immune from 5G Corona is taking Estadiol!

People love to blanket statement as if they've met every fan of a certain show. " hur dur, dragonball fans suck, so i won't watch it" Nevermind that you can watch a show and never interact with other fans but i guess people just need some excuse

If said fandom is comprised of hypocrites & insecure assholes aggrandazing a garbageshow pretentious of it being the ultimate masterpiece & accomplish nothin but abuse/troll fans of other shows while the fanbase itself relishes living in paradise of fool.

You got every reason to hate goddamn anime/show

If there's significanly lack of fandom surrounding a exceptionally great show & scores on every aspect: characters, storyboard, production values, themes & its dedicated fanbase actually respect fans of different shows.

Now such shows dont deserve hate, instead mountains of love[/spoiler]

But... why? If you enjoy something, the fanbase shouldn't affect your enjoyment of that thing regardless of the direction said fanbase leans towards. Sure, it may affect your interaction with those fans, but it doesn't change the series itself nor should it change your opinion of it.

No man. I had this unpleasurable moment with YYH fan & it actually degraded the goodwill of YYH for md

Let me start off sayin I'm no YYH fan but the quality of series itself (watched it on Animax) impressed me. It really caught me by suprise considerin I watched right at start of Yusuke/Tugoro battle & was on "troll-mode". But its subsequent arc filled with Doctor, Sailor, Shooter & the whole Mazoku Yusuke/Raizen part literally blew me away.

It actually degraded my opinion on YYH considering how a SINGLE post on its trivial scene (Raizens death actually) triggered a whole bunch of intellectuals. It was at dat moment I washed my hands off YYH. Never looked back till date, which is a shame cuz the series held an equal place as DBZ on my heart

HXH, AoT, FMAB & Inuyasha fanbases are relatively tame & actually learn more about the show from their fandom. Quality of these shows dont need recognition, but its their lack of buzz/hype surrounding them is enigmatic.

I like Dragon Ball, Sonic, Undertale, and Steven Universe to name a few. If people don't like those franchises, that's fine. Every huge fanbase has their fair share of people that take it a bit too far, some more than others. In this day and age with social media where just about everyone can interact with each other, you're gonna run into the "dark" side of some fandoms eventually or even more often than you want. Even the huge fan bases that seem pretty calm probably have their share of crazy/obsessive in there.

What I find more annoying is that whenever something new gets very popular nowadays, people always say things like "This fandom is getting as cancerous as xx!" Happening with Cuphead, also happened with Night in the Woods, to name a couple. I mostly find the people who complain and whine about fanbases more annoying than the fans themselves.

I somewhat take back what I said. Someone in the call of duty "community" got someone killed because he was a sore loser and to make things worse, he gave the swat team the wrong address and someone who had nothing to do with gaming got killed instead of who he was playing with.

I've read this mostly happens within that "community" so I don't blame anyone one bit if they don't want to even look at that franchise let alone be a part of it.

It's this kind of sh*t that results in us Americans ending up with less rights so watch this thing get out of control and all kinds of new crazy laws get put in place and all the mainstream media calling gamers monsters.

In fairness though, Dragon Ball is one of the relatively few things I'm genuinely interested in that has a "cringy and obsessive fandom". You (thankfully) don't get much, or any, nonsense like this with fans of things like Philip K. Dick books, Neil Gaiman comics, or David Cronenberg movies.

In the rare instances when something that I do like does however acquire a cringe-inducing fanbase (like Dragon Ball has) it traditionally hasn't put me off to still enjoying it by itself divorced from all that. What it does do however, unfortunately, is make me far, far less apt to be as casually open about my fandom for it as I might otherwise be.

For example while I'm not now, nor was I ever at any point in my life a die-hard obsessive about Sonic the Hedgehog (no one really was back in the character's heyday on the Genesis: they were just a very well liked series of 16 bit platformers and little else besides; absolutely nobody anywhere took it "seriously" as a "mythos" or "saga" etc. because that'd be ridiculous and no different than treating something as similarly asinine like Super Mario in that manner), I still to this day, as I did in the 16 bit era, very much like and play the original run of Sega Genesis/CD Sonic games (and now Mania).

Thing is... for most of the last near-20 years however, I almost NEVER bring up Sonic unless its brought up first somehow. One, because I just genuinely am not THAT invested in it, and two, because of the stigma that the fanbase has indeed brought on it. That stigma unfortunately is justly deserved, because both the fans themselves as well as the vast overwhelming majority of the games in between the 16 bit titles and Mania are nearly all toxic sewage, the former bordering on clinical psychosis.

Its a similar thing with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I've always, since the 80s, absolutely loved the original Mirage comics, and still have a genuine passion for them as a wonderful example of the immense creativity of the 80s indie comic scene... however that's largely where my interest in the franchise begins and ends (though the old Konami games are also mostly great). The entire rest of the franchise itself (all the movies, cartoons, etc), and moreover its fanbase (outside of some remaining diehard circles dedicated to the Mirage version) are so beyond ghastly and grotesque as to put me off from making any kind of public display of my fondness for the original comic. Like with the Sonic games, there's just too much built-up baggage and stigma associated with the rest of the IP as an entity as well as its fanbase's general lunacy, for me to wish to be identified as part of it.

Unfortunately its now gotten to be that way with Dragon Ball as well. For a very long time I resisted against letting the dub and its fanbase put a cloud over my love for DB. But as of mostly the last 8 years or so, I've kind of largely put Dragon Ball into a similar pile as the Mirage TMNT comics: something I still hold a tremendous deal of affinity for, but am loathe to broadcast it openly, because the very idea of being even tangentially associated with either its fanbase or its more well-known bastardization is something I actively wish to avoid.

So yeah, I suppose for a rare few things that I love, the cringy obsessives circling them have shamed me into a closet with regards to being more open about my investment in those particular entities. But I still engage with them and I still try not to let the crazies get too much further in the way of my enjoyment beyond that.

Journey to the West, chapter 26 wrote:The strong man will meet someone stronger still:
Come to naught at last he surely will!

Zephyr wrote:And that's to say nothing of how pretty much impossible it is to capture what made the original run of the series so great. I'm in the generation of fans that started with Toonami, so I totally empathize with the feeling of having "missed the party", experiencing disappointment, and wanting to experience it myself. But I can't, that's how life is. Time is a bitch. The party is over. Kageyama, Kikuchi, and Maeda are off the sauce now; Yanami almost OD'd; Yamamoto got arrested; Toriyama's not going to light trash cans on fire and hang from the chandelier anymore. We can't get the band back together, and even if we could, everyone's either old, in poor health, or calmed way the fuck down. Best we're going to get, and are getting, is a party that's almost entirely devoid of the magic that made the original one so awesome that we even want more.

Kamiccolo9 wrote:It grinds my gears that people get "outraged" over any of this stuff. It's a fucking cartoon. If you are that determined to be angry about something, get off the internet and make a stand for something that actually matters.

I still think that every fanbase has a small percentage of "crazies". I think most people are apt to just watch and peacefully discuss. The bigger the franchise, the more crazies there are even if the percentage stays about the same.

The biggest truths aren't original. The truth is ketchup. It's Jim Belushi. Its job isn't to blow our minds. It's to be within reach.
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take - Wayne Gretzky" - Michael Scott
Happiness is climate, not weather.